Not Sure What to Do With Your Career? You’re Not Alone

As a college student, you’re told to choose a major, complete internships and join clubs and activities that interest you. These experiences are designed to lead to a fulfilling career, but what if you don’t know what you want to do yet? That’s totally okay and in fact, it can actually be beneficial to you in the long run.

You’re going to change your mind at least once.

When you begin your freshman year of college, the major you choose might be something that interests you, but you don’t really know if you’ll enjoy it until you try it out. Most college students change their major at least once in college and many change them more than once for several reasons. You might really like history, but you may decide once you start taking history classes that you’re not as excited about it as you originally thought. College is the perfect time to expand your horizons and do a lot of different things, and figuring out what you don’t want to do is just as important, if not more important, than finding your dream career.

Internships and jobs can help you find your dream career.

Very few people start off knowing exactly what they want to do with the rest of their lives because it’s hard to know what you’re looking for in a career until you actually get a taste of that particular industry. Although the classroom teaches you quite a bit, there are some things you can’t learn anywhere besides the professional world. Internships are the perfect opportunity to test the waters and you might find that you love the field that you’re studying or come to realize that it’s not for you. The good news is that both revelations are extremely valuable.

Your classmates are in a similar situation.

It can be easy to compare yourself to your friends who seem like they have it all figured out, but the truth is that sometimes you just have to fake it until you make it. Almost no college student has his or her entire life planned out, so try to remember that your fellow students across the country feel the same way that you do. Being unsure about your career opens up so many doors because it simply means that you have a ton of options to choose from. Our advice to you is to get as many different experiences as you can to help you decide where you see yourself in five years, 10 years and so on. Just keep in mind that every time you find something you don’t like, you’re that much closer to discovering your passion, so don’t stress about uncertainty, because you never know what can happen.

Talk to friends and family, join clubs, take classes that interest you, take on internships and jobs and you’ll be well on your way to finding something that makes you feel like you’ll never work a day in your life. In the meantime, though, enjoy not knowing and take advantage of everything college has to offer.

Alyssa DoyleWayUp Staff

Alyssa is a Marketing Intern at WayUp and a junior at The College of New Jersey, studying English with minors in Marketing and Interactive Multimedia. She hopes to pursue a career in editing, writing, marketing, or social media. She loves to read, write, travel, listen to country music, and spend time with her family, friends, and dog.